‘What? No. Lost it walking home.’ I haven’t even thought about a cover story until now. Idiot. ‘Think it fell out of my jacket pocket,’ I tell her. ‘There’s…there’s a hole,’ I lie.
I try Al and Morven, to see where they’ve got to. Of course; they’re visiting Granny Gilmour in the old folks’ home in Aberdeen. It’s become something of a Sunday ritual over the last few years. I wasn’t invited because her early-onset dementia’s got so bad it might upset me not to be recognised. She already thinks Mum is one of her sisters and there are some days when she struggles to recall who Dad is.
I revise my phone-losing story to maybe having absent-mindedly put it into what was actually the space between the lining and the jacket’s outer layer rather than the pocket I thought I was putting it into, to avoid having to tear a hole in my jacket (because, knowing Mum, she’ll try to repair the tear). I have no idea whether this sounds convincing or contrived.
I lie back on the bed. Actually, my balls don’t feel quite so bad now. I carefully unzip and pull down, to take a look. No visible damage. I pull up my tee; no bruises on my belly either. I guess if I’d been ready for it, tensed, there might have been. I do myself back up again.
Antsy. I’m aware that I’m turning the cordless phone over and over in my hands, like something falling away…Tad vulnerable too, being honest. Feeling the need to be around people.
Oh, fuck it. I call Ferg. He was snoozing, but agrees to meet in the Formantine Lounge, in the old Station Hotel.
We sit in the first-floor lounge looking out over Union Street. It’s Sunday quiet, though there are still a few shops open. I’ve been to one myself: Bash and Balbir’s dad’s old place, buying a new phone. I’ve got it out the box and I’m RTFM-ing and setting it up as Ferg and I talk. He’s sipping a pint of IPA, I have a coffee.
No iPhone outlet in the centre of town? I’m appalled. The new phone’s touch screen is rubbish in comparison. I have so been spoiled. It’ll be the Apple Store on Regent Street for me as soon as I get back to London. Not much point buying one here anyway; still need to wait to get it back home to sync the fucker. (I didn’t bother bringing my laptop this weekend because, of course…I had my iPhone! Fuck.)
‘Oh, Jel tracked me down,’ I tell Ferg.
I’d found that I wanted to talk about That Night and its repercussions, its aftermath. I haven’t said anything about my excursion to the bridge with the Murston boys; Ferg thinks I wandered home, lost my moby en route and just chillaxed, between Lee’s loft and when I called him.
Ferg gives me his best seen-and-heard-it-all-before-but-keep-talking-anyway look: head back, eyebrows up, eyelids down. ‘She did?’
‘She did.’
‘This is in London, I take it?’
‘This is in London,’ I confirm. ‘Couple of years ago.’
‘And?’
‘Jel was there for a weekend. Going to a concert, seeing some friends, doing some cultural stuff. I was going to be around — I mean, we’d talked on the phone and email about meeting up when she was down in London before, but I was always away, to the point she thought I was trying to avoid her, which I wasn’t—’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yeah, honestly. No,
‘What’s so terrible about toilets?’ Ferg says indignantly. ‘Nice clean toilets are lovely.’ He looks almost dreamy and gazes round the near empty lounge — there’s only us, a young couple and one very old geezer, all widely dispersed, besides the barman sitting on a bar stool with a newspaper — and says, ‘I have some terribly fond memories.’
‘I bet you do, Ferg. Anyway, all that aside, it was actually great sex, and we only had the time to do it once — I mean — so of course I’d happily have seen her again and hopefully take up where we left off? But anyway; I’d already said she could stay at my place, but I was seeing this jewellery designer at the time and I might have forgotten to mention this to Jel? Or we — me and this girl — hadn’t been going out when I’d first said Jel could stay, like, a year earlier or whatever, and there was just…some awkwardness when Jel came to stay, because this other girl was there too, staying the weekend? That’s all.’
‘Awkwardness, like the delightful Anjelica had expected she’d be sharing your bed,’ Ferg suggests, ‘not the other girl?’
